Adventures of Chris Review | Nintendo Switch, PC.
This is Chris Guin, like many kids into video games in the early 90s, he was a stereotypical dork that loved video games, was a bit overweight, and had an impeccable imagination. This is his video game and somewhat autobiography, a fun new indie appropriately titled, The Adventures of Chris and it's available on PC, Mac, and Nintendo Switch.
This game truly makes you feel like Chris, actually, I didn't need to play this game to feel like Chris. I too grew up as an overweight video game nerd and thus I found myself resonating a lot with the humor and writing with this adventure. Being somewhat of an autobiography, we play and learn a lot about Chris, a young well-rounded boy who finds himself whisked away to a world of magic and fantasy.
It's here that the evil Count Jr, transforms Chris, along with multiple other kidnapped children from all around the world, into obscure objects. It turns out this evil villain wanted to get into a villain club and these now modified children are Count Jr's bribe gift.
Luckily Chris manages to escape Count Jr's clutches and finds himself in the balloon kingdom hovering over everything. It's here he devises a plan to find the missing children across the world and save the day. It's a story filled with plenty of laughs and humor that I'm sure those of you that grew up in similar scenarios to Chris will most certainly resonate with the writing.
For me, who was bullied for being overweight as a kid, a lot of the laughs at Chris were relatable but also empowering in some sense. Seeing this young weak nerd go from zero to hero, it was heartwarming. Once the story opens up to saving the children across the world, the gameplay is presented in this action platformer format that's reminiscent of Mega Man.
I was presented with a world map that featured both optional and mandatory missions that progressed toward the game's competition. Just like the Robot Masters in Mega Man, I was able to tackle any of these missions in any order I'd like. The sense of freedom was great, it kept the gameplay from feeling constrained while also letting me explore the different types of levels, enemies, and environments that each stage held.
Early on, Chris can't really do much. He can barely even jump to a ledge without struggling to pull himself up. He's about as weak as you can get but as he visits these various locations to save the kids around the world, he finds himself with new powers to aid him on his journey.
For example, he able to float in midair with a curse that's inflicted by Count Jr. Later on, as he fights bigger bosses, he'll come across new powers like the ability to shoot fire from his fist. The more powers Chris unlocks, the more versatile he becomes.
With the press of a button, he's able to switch between multiple powers for whatever case scenario comes in his way. Throughout these levels are collectibles for the completionist running through this campaign. At the very end are boss fights that in true classic platformer fashion, push you to use your new-found ability from that level in a unique way to take them down. On rare occasions, I noticed hit detection wasn't always the best, especially when using the body slam ability that occasionally bounced back and other times, went right through the enemy.
While the campaign isn't very long, I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing it. I thought the level design was solid and the variety of powers, kept each level evolving in unique ways. As for replayability, multiple difficulties can amp up the challenge for players or make it a breeze for anyone that just wants to get through it.
When this game originally came out to the Ouya console and Amazon Fire TV, it adopted a sprite look that made gameplay look like a retro platform. For this new take on the game with new gameplay mechanics, a revamp look came along with it. In the place of the sprites is a new hand-drawn look that mimics the art style of many Saturday cartoons.
I loved the art style as it truly did feel like an interactive old 4kids cartoon come to life for the modern age. It's certainly not on the level of something like Cuphead or Monsterboy when it comes to the illustration quality, but there's still a level of charm here I couldn't help but appreciate.
If anything, I think what could have used a bit more work was the environment. While traversing through areas, I felt that the background and foreground could come off a bit too simple, at times almost static-like. It occasionally made gameplay feel like I was playing an old fan-made flash game on New Grounds.
In terms of performance, while playing on my PC for this review, I didn't notice a single hiccup. It's a pretty minimal demanding so though I didn't experience the title on Nintendo Switch, I can't imagine it'd run into any performance issues there either.
Major props to Chris Guin who not only was the main developer behind this game but was also the composer for its music. I love the orchestration theme song that played in the background during big story moments. This song helped make moments feel epic to the point of being reminiscent of Mario landing on Good Egg Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy. Even the boss battle music seemed like it belonged in an amazing dog fight battle from Star Fox 64. Needless to say the music in this game is awesome.
I wish I could say the same about the dialogue in this game but sadly there isn't any, at least not voiced. I enjoyed a lot of the writing with this title and I would have loved to see some sort of voice acting to go along with it. I understand full voice acting is challenging, especially for an indie game.
However, any form of simple voice sounds that attach to certain characters speaking I think could have gone a long way for this game's presentation. The Adventures of Chris is a heartwarming adventure game that's reminiscent of classic NES platformers under the art style of a Saturday morning cartoon. I loved visiting levels from all around the world and see Chris progress from a nobody to a full-fledged hero.
His story is hilarious yet charming in many ways that feel relatable, especially with my childhood. If anything, I would have just loved to see a bit more on the presentation side when it came to character dialogue or some of the art with the environments.